become ailliamson place to go to for a while for a decade. williamson wellness as it was called, they would just prescribe thousands of pills every day without really consulting the patients. you paid $150 and got a prescription. host: "american overdose" is the title of the book. you are a british reporter for the guardian newspaper. how is this a uniquely american crisis, as you described it? guest: a couple reasons. one is the scale. there is nowhere else where you will see the scale of death we have seen over the past 20 years. nobody really knows the numbers because early on, deaths from opioids were not recorded often because of stigma or because they were not recognized. the cdc says at least 350,000 people are dead. the real figure is probably higher. you are not seeing that in any other country. the other thing that makes this unique is how it came about. this isn't the result of an accident. it was described by the former head of the fda as one of the greatest mistakes in modern american medicine. when you get under the skin of it,

become ailliamson place to go to for a while for a decade.amson wellness as it was called, they would just prescribe thousands of pills every day without really consulting the patients. you paid $150 and got a prescription. host: "american overdose" is the title of the book. you are a british reporter for the guardian newspaper. how is this a uniquely american crisis, as you described it? guest: a couple reasons. one is the scale. there is nowhere else where you will see the scale of death we have seen over the past 20 years. nobody really knows the numbers because early on, deaths from opioids were not recorded often because of stigma or because they were not recognized. the cdc says at least 350,000 people are dead. the real figure is probably higher. you are not seeing that in any other country. the other thing that makes this unique is how it came about. this isn't the result of an accident. it was described by the former head of the fda as one of the greatest mistakes in modern american medicine. when you get under the skin of it, it rea